Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an object recognition apparatus, a method of controlling an information processing apparatus, and a storage medium.
Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, a method for learning a feature or a pattern and for recognizing a target object from a depth image or an image in which the target object is captured is known. However, in conventional methods, there is a problem in that a recognition rate falls in a case where there is a large difference between an image prepared in advance and an image desired to be actually recognized. For example, images greatly differ from each other in such cases in which a part of the target object is concealed by other objects, a surface of a target object reflects specularly causing saturation to occur, and the like.
In contrast to this, a method for reproducing a state in which a target object is concealed by providing a plurality of appropriate masks to an image prepared in advance is proposed in Japanese Patent No. 4291757. A recognition method that is robust with respect to a concealed target object is realized by learning features and patterns from a plurality of images in which a concealed target object is reproduced.
However, there are a huge number of variations of an appearance of a packaged object in a case where an object (packaged object) wrapped in a transparent packaging member (such as transparent vinyl or bubble wrap) or an object covered in a packaging member is the target object. This is because packaging members are often non-rigid bodies whose shape changes and on whose surface specular reflections can easily occur, and thereby the appearance of the target object changes depending on color of the packaging member. For this reason, there is a problem in that image recognition is still difficult if only masking of a region of a part of the target object is performed as in Japanese Patent No. 4291757.
Also, although a method of capturing a large number of various patterns of appearances (images) of a packaged object by varying the orientation of the target object or the shape of the packaging member can be considered, there is a problem in that it is cumbersome to capture such images.
The present invention is conceived in view of the above-described problems, and provides a technique for reducing the effort in obtaining images (learning data) of an object that is covered by a transparent object.